[quote]teotjunk wrote:
I am familiar with De Franco’s program. If I were to try it, what I would do is to simply do is to replace my dynamic days with RE days (still a four day program, just replace DE with RE).
I understand his rationale for it. He is claiming that speed work is not important unless you are a lot bigger but the person introduced me to the WSB template, someone who competes at national level in powerlifting competition, repeatedly emphasized to me the importance of speed work, even though I was skinny. So I would have to weigh what he says against what De Franco says
teotjunk[/quote]
Joe D developed his program based on what he had seen with the hundreds of athletes he has trained over the years. Speed days are fine, and if you look at my training log you’ll see that I’ll cycle them in every second or third week (depends on if it’s upper or lower body).
He removed DE days because they can be just as taxing to one’s body as a max effort day. I can attest to that: DE bench really beats up my elbows and shoulders and DE squat/dl can fry your hips and low back. The RE days are used to primarily build hypertrophy, but also allow you to focus on a particular lift and work on form if need be.
Another person whose training philosophy I find compelling and worthy of consideration is Jack Reape, a top USAPL lifter in the 242s. He mixes WSB with Eastern Bloc type of training. Here, the core lifts are focused on much more and trained twice a week built around a WSB-style template.
He wrote a great article about it on elitefts.com called “Somewhere Between Moscow and Columbus”. He’s an elite-level lifter, and the article is geared toward his competition training, but beginners and intermediates (like myself) can manage his routine or something close to it.
One thing to take away from this is to adapt a training philosophy to one’s own capabilities and ultimate goals. WSB is great and has helped focus my training to produce great results that I never thought were possible. It also made me realize that getting stronger doesn’t have to be complicated.
For example, instead of being preoccupied with weak points in a lift, just get bigger and stronger and your weak points will start to take care of themselves. Also, ME work doesn’t have to entail going for max singles, but can also be for 3s and 5s. Not only will you get stronger pushing the lifts up, but the added time under tension can lead to muscle hypertrophy…and who doesn’t want bigger arms?
